Monkey feasting on Pitahaya fruit

The monkeys always get the very best!  Here’s a shot just outside the bathroom window of a Capuchin monkey snagging the last and best of the Pitahaya fruits.  We’d have grabbed it first but couldn’t persuade anybody to climb up the tree to get it… 

Here’s a shot of the same Pitahaya cactus in full-bloom a few weeks later; the flower is huge, white and night-blooming.  I took this picture at about 5 a.m. while the flowers were still wide-open.  I also found another bloom on a cactus growing closer to the ground, with a slew of stingless bees pollinating it.  However, by 9a.m. it had closed, and that was that.  Show over. 

Willow Zuchowski, author of ‘A Guide to Tropical Plants of Costa Rica’, writes of Pitahaya: “The epiphytic cactus with the most impressive flowers is a dry-forest, night-blooming cereus, called pitahaya (Hylocereus costaricensis), a species with branching triangular stems.  In the wet season, the fragrant flowers open to a diameter of ca. 30 cm.  The bright magenta fruits are edible, and pitahaya-flavored ice cream is sometimes sold at the Pops ice-cream chain in Costa Rica.”

Yes, it’s true!  Fea still lives!  We estimate that she is at least 23 years old.  Back in Pennsylvania, our groundsman found Fea abandoned on the country road leading up to our farmhouse.  She was nearly dead from exposure, her Persian fur matted into a filthy mess.  He took her to the local vet, The Cat Doctor in Hellertown, who fixed her up - thank you, Susan - and a few days later, I spotted this scrawny, naked, really, really UGLY cat wandering around the barnyard.  He told me the story and hinted that he really didn’t want the ugly cat, so I took her and named her Fea – Spanish for ‘ugly’...  But then her fur grew back quickly, she thrived, and she even traveled with us to Costa Rica, where she has lived with us for the past 14 years.  Fea nearly died several times here in Costa Rica - this is a cat on her 8^th life!  I remember thinking more than once that Fea would be dead by the following morning – after the scorpion…snake…bad fall…bufo toad…and assorted other unknown ailments - but Fea was always with us the next morning and back outside again, where she thoroughly enjoys tottering about like a drunken sailor...